


We're off to see the Librarian

by CantSpeakFae



Series: Once More With Glitter [13]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Labyrinth
Genre: And Buffy is already sick of him, Angst and Humor, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Juffy is my real OTP, Mild Language, Mr. Feathers is a real boy, Other, Owl Form Jareth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 22:51:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16251419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CantSpeakFae/pseuds/CantSpeakFae
Summary: Mr. Feathers is a lot less...feathery in the morning, and Buffy's day is already off to a shaky start because of it.





	We're off to see the Librarian

The first thing that Jareth's aware of is something extremely uncomfortable pressing into his backside. Hard and...wet? He wrinkles his nose and cringes back from the feeling, his mind immediately jumping to Wren's face. Of course, only his younger sister could jump pull something so juvenile as putting... putting... what in the seven hells is under him, anyway?    
  
He sits upright, reaching for the thing, and then cringing back when his fingertips encounter bed sheets that do not feel like his and he finally pries his eyes open...looking around and realizing that these are, in fact, not his bed sheets.    
  
And this is not his bedroom.    
  
Jareth turns his head, blinking rapidly at the sight of a young, blonde,  _ human _ lying beside him on the bed, while he's lying on top of some sort of box thing, that's been soaked through with spilled water.   
  
And he whips himself backwards so fast that he can almost feel his brain rattling around in his skull, tipping back off of the bed and falling onto the floor with a painful thud.   
  
“What the FU-?!”

Buffy's dreaming about Angel.  About kissing Angel. In...the sunlight. There's a rustling noise coming from far away, but she ignores it. Because she's kissing Angel in the sunlight, and - 

_ "What the FU-?!" _   
  
Buffy sits bolt upright, clutching the blanket to her chest. She's still half caught up in her dream, and can't figure out what woke her...or why there's a wet cardboard box on her bed...   
  
“Mr. Feathers! Did you fall, again?”   
  
She scrambles across the bed and leans over the far side...but there is no owl on the floor, injured or otherwise. There's...a boy. A boy in weird clothes. A boy, whom she does not know, in weird clothes, sitting on her floor, amongst a smattering of feathers.   
  
Buffy does the only obvious thing there is to do.   
  
She screams.

“ _ You're _ screaming? Why are  _ you _ screaming? I should be the one who's screaming!”

He damn near is, actually, as he scrambles up from the floor, leaving all of his dignity behind in the process. He stands...and winces as she still seems set on shrieking.   
  
“Oh, gods, please stop. You're...pitchy.”   
  
He claps on hand over his ear while the other inspects his arm. There's patterns of bruises against his flesh, signifying damage...he must have been injured, traveling through realms, and reverted to a smaller form to conserve energy.   
  
“Where  _ am _ I?”

“You're in my BEDROOM! How did you get into my bedroom?? And what did you do to Mr Feathers?!?”

Realizing he's just barely taller than her, and remembering she's the Slayer, for crying out loud, Buffy stops screaming. She leaps off the opposite side of the bed from where Prince Pitchy stands, and grabs one of the many stakes she has hidden throughout her room, and brandishes it threateningly.   
  
“You'd better stop criticizing my screaming, and start giving me answers!”

“...Mr. Feathers?”

Jareth repeats, and it takes him a second to realize what she's talking about. Feathers? Oh, fates. He must have been an owl. It's the only bird he knows how to turn into.   
  
And is she threatening him with a  _ stick _ ? Who knew mortals were so...primitive?   
  
“I don't know  _ how _ I got to your bedroom. I assume you brought me here. I just...looked a bit different when you did, is all. Smaller.”   
  
He gestures with his hands. He doesn't know how good his mortal-tongue is or if she even understands him.   
  
“Did you really name me Mr. Feathers?”

“What was I going to call him, Mr. Douglas Whitcomb from Harrisburg PA? And what do you mean call YOU Mr Feathers?”   


The expression on her face shifts from alarm to confusion to intrigue tinged with doubt.   
  
“...Are you saying you ARE Mr Feathers? How is that possible?”

“Possible.”

He repeats the word, scrunching up his nose like it leaves a sour taste in his mouth.   
  
“Possible, possible, possible. You know, if you mortals could get less tangled up in what is, what isn't, and what could or could not be, I think you'd be less restricted.”   
  
That's really all the answer she's going to get from him. Mostly because he's skirting around that question -- he has no idea how he turns into an owl. No one else in his family can do it. But he's not going to admit that he doesn't know to  _ her. _   
  
“Who are you, exactly? And where am I? I mean, besides in your bedroom. I know that. What realm is this? Ah, human. Obviously. I mean...what Kingdom am I in?”   
  
Is that the word for it? He hopes so.

“Uh, no Kingdoms here. You're in Sunnydale? In California? The United States? ...Planet Earth? And I'm Buffy. Buffy Summers. The…”

She hesitates. Do strange boys who were once owls count as secret identity-knowing members of the Scooby Gang? She'd better check with Giles before spilling any beans…

She quickly hides the stake beneath her pillow - out of sight, out of mind.

“I'm Buffy. I'm guessing you don't go by Mr. Feathers? Who are you and where are you from?”

“I'm Jareth.”

He draws himself up to his fullest height in the way that he's been groomed to his entire life, tilting his head to an angle that he knows is his best and speaking with a new air of calm.   
  
“Son of the High King Oberon. High Prince of the Thirteen Kingdoms of the Underground and newly appointed Goblin King. ...Or, at least, I  _ was _ .”   
  
Now that he's not being faced down by an unreasonably upset girl wielding a weapon, he's relaxed enough to remember what had transpired during his last night in the Underground.  _ Before _ he'd woken up in this strange place.    
  
Banishment.    
  
His father had  _ banished _ him!    
  
And for what? Falling in love? Seeking to carve his own path rather than blindly following the one already created for him? How could he  _ do _ this? How could he send him to this strange world with no help; no guide?   
  
“I'm in the Above? Well, that's a shorter flight than I was expecting. How did I get hurt?”   
  
He doesn't expect her to know. He examines the patterns of bruising on his arm, again. Must have been a bigger animal, or maybe the side of a building. If his father's magic disorientated him enough, he wouldn't have seen it coming.   
  
“I'm from the Underground. Ah, the Faerie realm?” He says, amending himself quickly when he remembers that most humans don't know the informal terms for these things. Buffy just listens and nods, as one does with a person who is clearly a few sammitches short of a picnic basket. She continues nodding even after he stops speaking. Finally, she decides on a course of action.

“Ok, yeah. I've gotta get you to Giles. He'll know what to do about you… But first, I gotta get dressed for school, and see if my mom...Oh no. Mom is gonna have an aneurysm, and not one of the funny kinds…”

With a grim look in her eyes, she opens the bedroom door...and finds a note taped to it. She pulls it down, and elief floods her face as she reads it. She looks up beaming.   
  
“Ok, so super cool - mom left for work hella early, which means I get to live the life of the not terminally grounded for another day. Jareth, I need you to turn around so I can change, and then I'll take you to someone who can help.  I really hope he can help… Sound cool with you?”

“...Giles? Is that who rules this land?”

  
Jareth purses his lips into a frown. It seems like a bit of a wasted effort. He doubts this Giles, whether he's King of California or not, is going to be of any help in this situation. How is he supposed to convince his father that this banishment was a mistake? But, he doesn't have time to tell Buffy that, because she's already running away from him and then back again, talking about her mother and using some other words that he knows but don't make sense in context.   
  
But he turns around, anyway, rolling his eyes as he does.   
  
“Fine.”

Buffy snorts at the thought of Giles ruling over anything besides his Library.

“He's not a ruler, he's a librarian! But he's very smart, and knows a lot about weird things...he might know about your fairyland. Ok, I'm dressed now. Thanks.”   
  
In record time, Buffy's ditched her jammies, and dressed in a purple minidress. Those new boots, in which box Jareth woke up on, go perfectly, and she sits on the edge of her bed to pull them on.*   
  
“Are you hungry, by the way? We've got cereal...maybe even pop-tarts, if you're lucky.”

Jareth turns back around with the same air of impatience, though his expression becomes quizzical when she starts to list off his breakfast options. Cereal? Pop-tarts? He's never heard of anything stranger. Or less appetizing. And he's not that hungry; maybe he hunted while he was in his owl form. Predatory instincts sometimes take over like that and he'll swallow a whole frog before his Fae brain can think twice about it. Blech.

“I'm fine. Thanks.”   
  
There is one issue, he has, though it's much more manageable. He's still dressed in the outfit he'd been wearing for his own miserably failed coronation. He holds his arms out from his sides and squeezes his eyes shut, concentrating very hard...and the fabric changes. Tights become jeans and his flowing, silk shirt becomes a...well, mortal tailored flowing silk shit because he's not an animal who's about to subject himself to cotton.   
  
“...Is this acceptable attire for your realm? I don't get to visit very often.”

“How...you...but...woah…”

Buffy stands, transfixed. Jareth not only...morphed his RenFest getup into a totally serviceable outfit, but  _ he _ morphed from a freakazoid into quite the hottie.   
  
“That...was so cool! How did you do that?!”

“...Magic.”

He says, simply, with a look that says that it should have been obvious to her. Hasn't she been listening to a word he's said in the last fifteen minutes? He's starting to doubt his safety with her.

“No, really.”

She waits for the real answer...and waits...and hello, awkward...   
  
“But...magic...how? Like, there's no books, or spells, or weird lizard body parts...or Latin?”

“Why would I need any of those things? I'm not  _ stealing _ magic, I'm just using it.”

Buffy's definitely not winning any favours from him. His eyes narrow and his upper lip curls back over his teeth. Whatever else she might have thought about him he can't believe she'd go as far as to assume that he's a  _ thief.  _   
  
“And, for the record, that's a bit speciesiest. Why would I, a Fae, use a  _ human _ language for an incantation? Honestly... I hope this scholar of yours has a better idea of what a Fae is than you do, because hanging around you and I'm likely to be murdered in under an hour.”

Buffy stares at him with thinly veiled contempt.

“This is what I get for trying to do a good deed. Instead of a nice, fluffy owl, I wake up with some rude jerk who has yet to even thank me from saving him from being wild dog food. At this rate, I'll murder you myself.”

Buffy flounces from her room and stomps down the stairs.

“Are you coming???”

If Jareth wasn't so sore, he might've already turned back into an owl and gone out the window at this rate. All the realms he could have been banished to; all the people he could have met, and he finds himself staring down an ill-tempered girl who seems to think that he owes her something? This isn't  _ his _ fault. He wouldn't have needed help if his father hadn't sent him away! 

Righteous anger is still burning in his veins when he starts after her, muttering under his breath in Fae and trying to steady himself. He can't wait to complain about this girl to Sadria... as soon as he gets home.    
  
Which he can do, can't he? That's why they're going to her scholar? He can sort this out. She seems confident in it and while he's loathe to trust her, he can't see any reason why she'd want to keep him bound to this world.   
  
“Yes, I'm coming... you don't have to  _ shout.” _

“Apparently, I did…” Buffy mutters under her breath and rolls her eyes.

She grabs a packet of pop-tarts, and holds the foil between her teeth as she shrugs into her jacket. She slings her bag across her shoulder, picks up her books, and storms out of the house without a word.


End file.
